


The City Weeps (Tears of Blood)

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Nightmare, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 02:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20127799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: You’re walking down the sidewalk of a busy city street on a sunny afternoon when the roads starts to flood.





	The City Weeps (Tears of Blood)

You’re walking down the sidewalk of a busy city street on a sunny afternoon when the roads starts to flood. 

It began slowly, so slowly you thought the water was just puddles from last night’s rain, but at an ever increasing speed the puddles expand before your very eyes. You realize something is wrong, horribly, horribly wrong. You look around for people, for an explanation but in the moment you were staring at the rising water in confusion, everyone has disappeared into thin air as if they never existed.

You run to the doors of the nearest building, hoping to seek shelter or at least higher grounds. By the time you get there, the water has spilled onto the sidewalk and is nipping at your heels. You try to pull open the door, but it’s stuck. 

You feel panic start to set in. As you’re pounding at the door, desperate for someone to open it, the water crawled up to your ankles. There’s no one inside and the door won’t budge.

You look around again. You look for an answer, a situation, a way out of this twisted reality as the water surges upward. You suddenly know with grim certainly there is no help coming and if you keep lingering, you will die in the flood. There is no answer, situation or way out except for up.

You climb onto the window ledge of the building, with a slight shiver. It felt like the temperature had dropped 10 degrees and you’re soaked to the middle of your calves, but you can’t stop. You grab the next handhold, the Beaux-Art style providing plenty of them, and spare a moment of gratitude towards the city’s architects before pulling yourself up. 

Glancing down, you estimate the water would have been at your waist if you were still on the ground. As you watch, it sloshes against the building as if reaching towards you. You shudder and try climbing faster but remain all too aware of the rising water levels chasing you upward. 

As you get higher, the temperature drops dramatically. By the time you’re a quarter way up, you’re constantly shivering. The sun has long disappeared behind the clouds and the light the breeze from earlier in the day has strengthened to a harsh wind. When you’re just past halfway up the building, you realize your feet aren’t just stiff from the cold but your shoes had started to frost over. 

You’re about three-quarters way to the top and nearly about to give up when you start to hear the low buzzing. Not an insect, while it was the right volume for it at the beginning, now it was too loud for it to be anything but a … a helicopter! You were saved!

You smile in relief and continue climbing with renewed vigour. Your formerly wet shoes and pants were frozen solid and your skin was starting to turn blue, but it was going to be ok. 

You just needed to get to the top of the building and then the helicopter could take you away to somewhere else, somewhere safe. The water continued to rise, but you weren’t scared anymore. There was a way out, a situation, an answer to your prayers. All you had to do now was get to the top and you could wave for help. 

You reach the top of the building and pull yourself onto the roof. It was a strange and confusing situation, but it was ok. It was almost over. You just needed to get the pilot’s attention. You look up, towards the sound of the helicopter’s blades. It was circling around, it’s spotlight easy to make out in the otherwise lightless sky but didn’t seem to have seen you. 

You yell and wave it at, trying to draw it’s attention and moments later swerves in your direction, it’s light blinding you. Your heart fills in hope until your eyes adjust and you notice a dark form next to the light. It almost looked like a machine gun… but it couldn’t be, right? 

In the seconds it takes you to discern it was truly a machine gun aimed in your direction, it starts firing. Instinct takes over and you run, from one edge to the other, only to realize there’s nowhere else to. As the bullets rain down around you, coming ever closer to hitting, you look down and see the water is now only mere metres away. With no other choice, you jump into the dark waters you were so desperate to escape moments ago. 

There’s nothing but the cold at first. The freezing temperature of the water shocking you into forgetting everything else, forgetting to swim. You don’t understand how water this cold isn’t frozen. You start struggling for air so you force your numb limbs to propel you towards the surface, shivering so hard you barely make any progress. Your lungs are burning even as the rest of you freeze. 

Just when you think you’re going to run out of precious oxygen, you break the surface of the water. Teeth clacking together, you do your best to stay afloat. You don’t think you were underwater for more than a few minutes but the scene in front of you looks nothing like the isolating darkness you climbed up to. 

More helicopters and several small planes circle the sky alight in red. There are tops of building peeking out from the surface of the water, each one of them burning. 

A plane flies by, so close you feel the vibrations it creates in the water. You follow it with your eyes only to watch it be hit by machine gun fire from a helicopter. 

As if in slow motion, you watch one of the bullets hit something, maybe a fuel or maybe the fuel tank itself. A brilliant white point appears, the start of an explosion and you look away to avoid being blinded. When you look back, the plane is in dozens of burning pieces. 

You spin around as best you can and see it was not the first aerial vehicle to have met such a fate. The water’s surface is littered with pieces of burning wreckage causing the sky and water to appear red, but you realize that wasn’t quite right. There was something else in the water. Many somethings, floating on the surface. 

With growing horror, you realize what the something had to be. You swim towards the nearest one, futilely hoping it was something else. 

The floating human body was even smaller up close. You reach out to touch it but at the last moment flinch back, unable to crush the shrinking hope the child could be alive. 

Still waiting any longer could truly kill the child if they were still alive. You reach out and flip them over, revealing a face with an enormous grin—a Cheshire grin.

You look at the water again, only now you realize it wasn’t water. It was never water. It was blood.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a nightmare so I wrote a short story and then I forgot to post it for two months


End file.
